THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 17, 1996 TAG: 9607170001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A17 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: Glenn Allen Scott
LENGTH: 79 lines
We Americans are seen by others no less than ourselves as a restless people.
The perception is accurate.
We live in the most-revolutionary country on Earth.
Until recent decades, the pace of change in countless other societies varied from slow to slower to imperceptible.
We are continually compelled to accommodate innovations that alter relationships and the ways in which we make our living - indeed, in the ways we think. We continually are called to face up to fresh challenges.
Our common needs - for food, clothing, shelter, safety, nurture, work, social contact, faith - are unchanging.
But families, communities, societies and culture are constantly being reshaped by the revolutionary forces loosed in the Great American Experiment.
Revolutions cast some people up, some people down, some people aside. They transform agriculture, industry, commerce.
To illustrate:
Fifty years ago, a half-century ago, the main street - called Main Street - of my hometown, the Southside Virginia town of Smithfield, contained within a few blocks most of the essentials of civilized life.
Within a block of Main Street were the town's churches - Baptist, Methodist, Episcopal, A.M.E.
There were three markets - Leon Chapman's Independent Market, an A&P and a Pender's. There was Dick Chapman's candy store and Charles Henley Chapman's Hardware.
There were two department stores, Delk's and Betts', and, a little later, a third, the Union Dollar Store; a pricey dress shop, Emily's; and a five-and-dime.
Three physicians (Drs. Massey, Parker and Warren) lived along the street. Each doctor cared for patients in his house. The dental office of the Drs. Ames was catty-cornered across the street from the Scott house. The office was attached to the senior Ames' house. The junior Ames lived directly across from his father, one house up from us on our side.
Also in that short stretch of Main Street were a wholesaler of tobacco products, a jeweler named Adelstein who drove a beautifully maintained Packard that ran as smoothly as any watch he repaired, a movie theater, a weekly newspaper office and job-printing shop and a competing job printer not far down the street, two pharmacies, Simpson's and Parrish's - later, Little's, two car dealers (Chevrolet, Ford). On Church Street within a stone's throw of Main was later-Lt. Gov. A.E.S. Stephens' law office.
There were four gasoline stations; each serviced cars, but Kello's, next door to us, had the biggest and busiest repair shop.
What else? Two banks - the Bank of Smithfield and the Merchants and Farmers Bank, a plumbing shop sagging beneath tons of pipes, three barber shops, Babe Livesay's eatery (Babe's specialty was a Smithfield-ham-salad sandwich, Sykes' (now the Smithfield) Inn, the crumbling 1750 courthouse and attendant 1799 clerk's office.
That's about it. Except for a Williamsburg-style U.S. Post Office. The town's elementary and high schools were but a 10-minute walk from that attractive building.
Farming and the Gwaltney and Luter meat-packing companies were the lifeblood of Main Street, which is still there, looking better thanks to loving attention by town citizens and local businesses. The courthouse and clerk's office are in preservationists' custody, much to their improvement.
But the compact commercial universe that existed during my childhood has been scattered to the winds. Gone are the markets, the department stores, the physicians, the car dealers, the movie house.
Centrifugal economic and technological forces doomed the small merchants of Main Street. Bigness supplanted smallness with the enthusiastic collaboration of consumers, and bigness needed space, which it found on agricultural acreage. An America on wheels changed the face of Main Street.
Communism didn't do in the small merchants in small towns, but the Cold War did - by accelerating the pace of technological invention, pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy and expanding career opportunities.
Don't look for villains. The forces are primarily impersonal and irresistible. Our choice is between rolling with the punches or being rolled over. MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The
Virginian-Pilot. by CNB